I watched A Ghost Story in the filled-to-the-gills Texas Theatre at the Oak Cliff Film Festival. As I hunched in the dark, nearly seated on top of the sweetest group of English teachers I’ve ever met, I was a little stunned at the size of the crowd. Even Jodorowsky’s newest film didn’t draw a crowd like this.

Welcome to the second installment of Spanish language orphan epics! Want to up the ante with some more existential despair, uncomfortable sexual antics, and surrealist imagery? Of course you do, you darling thing, you-- and wouldn’t mom be proud?

In honor of Spring Break, I decided to be a lazy bitch and take last week off. Sorry, loyal readers and c’est le vie! In recompense, I’m offering you a morbid, Spanish orphan extravaganza. First up is 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone.

Along with interviews featuring some of the horror genre’s most fascinating women, CineDump is also proud to showcase reviews, discussions, and ramblings celebrating some great horror movie heroines and villainesses. For our first entry, we’ll look back at one of the earliest horror movies made, 1922’s Nosferatu. Coming just three short years after the groundbreaking The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu employed some at the time cutting edge technology, surreal imagery, and a familiar story to capture the fears of its audience.

With the frequency with which Hollywood productions change or fall apart, the history of the industry is littered with “what ifs” and “almosts.” We’ll never get to see what would’ve happened had Alejandro Jodorowsky directed Dune; we’ll probably never see the result of Orson Welles filming Charles Williams’ Dead Calm. On the other hand, there are productions which do see it to fruition that are so out of the ordinary for their creators, or so far removed from any other films out there, that they function as the fulfilment of certain what-if scenarios without even involving any of the parties in question.